I want to be.....

I don't know what brought this memory to the forefront of my brain. But, I'm just going with it as I feel it needs to be shared. For whatever reasons. And I think it has value. AND it is painful so, that usually is a clue that it has value.

My family moved to Santa Monica when I was starting Jr. High. My mother had been raised there and was homesick. I attended John Adams Jr. High. Busing had started but, since the school was "naturally integrated" we didn't participate in busing.

My P.E. teach was Mr. Shockley. I remember very few of my teacher's names but, Mr. Shockley I will never forget. He was our neighbor as well. He and his wife with their two kids lived down the street. Mr. Shockley was black.

In my P.E. class was a girl. A very angry, out of control, black girl. And Mr. Shockley spent most of P.E. trying. Trying to work with this girl. Desperately trying to find a way to reach her. She was very disruptive so the rest of us would just sit and watch. They would go back a forth. With her just mouthing off and him trying to get her focused on something.

One day he says to her "what do you want to do with your life? Do you have any idea? Is there anything you are passionate about? Anything you are interested in?" And as a 14 year old I was thinking to myself "you have got to be kidding, we are like 14, we don't know what the hell we want to be when we grow up." And I'm internally rolling my eyes at this line of serious questioning.

And then the girl says "Yeah. Yeah I do know what I want to be." And Mr. Shockley says "WHAT!?"

And she says "I want to be white."


Whoa. And she is serious. And you could feel the pain. And Mr. Shockley looks shocked. You could have heard a pin drop in that gym.

To be something you don't want to be. To be something you can not change. To not want to be who you are because of society. Society made a 14 year old black girl want to be white. Well, what she wanted was to be accepted. And this was 1976.

Mr. Shockley gave up after that. And the girl well, she gave up in way too because she stopped being disruptive. She would just sit off to the side during P.E. and Mr. Shockley let her.


I guess there is a fine line between behavior and who you are. But, there is a difference too. I think that is what gets argued about in society. Somethings are pretty clear. If you are a murderer that maybe who you are but, the behavior is well, not going to be accepted by society for good reason.

But, there has always been and maybe always will be sadly, a whole lot not accepted for no good reason.